Following two decades of tremendous advancements in biomedical
research, nanomedicine has now spread from labs to hospital wards
and is already starting to redesign the state of the art in clinical
practice. Many of the technological advancements achieved to date
are offering new unexpected benefits to millions of patients, both
in terms of hyperearly diagnosis as well as in terms of regenerative
medicine; yet those are excellent premises for an even larger impact
on the future of the entire humankind.
Many healthcare providers, business leaders, and lawyers are
well aware that, in the coming years, medicine will be further
implemented by a wide range of novel materials with bioactive
and therapeutic properties, rare diseases will be defeated by cell
therapy, and tissue engineering will overcome the limits of organ
transplantation. Their needs are together similar and multifaceted:
some of these professionals are still looking for a comprehensive
guide to understand in detail this amazing revolution, some are
trying to address new challenges in clinical research, those that will
hopefully lead to the next Nobel Prize, and others are stillwondering
how to prevent improper use of these innovative technologies by
patients.